


a little bit like fate

by themoonsneverseenmebefore



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/F, Fluff, Getting Together, Human Catra (She-Ra), MeetCute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28460370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoonsneverseenmebefore/pseuds/themoonsneverseenmebefore
Summary: Catra’s annoyed when some idiot sets off the fire alarm in her building in the middle of the night, until she spots the girl who lives in the apartment next to hers and decides to finally talk to her.They end up having more in common than they ever would’ve expected.A modern meetcute neighbors au!
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 265
Collections: whispering woods library new years fic exchange





	a little bit like fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xandrillia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xandrillia/gifts).



> for emma (xandrillia) in our discord gift fic exchange, who asked for a meetcute or an AU and got both! I had SO MUCH FUN writing this. happy new year merry christmas happy holidays and I hope you enjoy!!

The hot girl who lives in apartment 3A is shivering on the sidewalk in her pajamas. Pajamas that appear to be . . . princess themed? They’re very pink, and there’s tiaras, and swords, and what look like unicorns.

Catra is glad she managed to remember to grab her glasses from her nightstand when the fire alarm started blaring so she can see at all, but especially these details, and finally a mostly still version of this girl who always seems to be in a hurry. The girl just moved in a few weeks ago, and Catra typically sees her leave their building in a flurry of blonde hair and multiple tote bags filled with textbooks and water bottles and lunch bags. The girl is usually in too much of a hurry for Catra to say anything to her other than, “hi,” to which the blonde girl always responds cheerfully.

Now, the blonde girl taps one socked foot (no shoes) and looks anxious to get back in the building, seeming more alert at 4:30 am than the rest of their neighbors, who mill about with bleary eyes and sleep-heavy limbs. Catra was much like them, in addition to being deeply annoyed at whoever caused the fire alarm to go off at this inhumane hour on her first night off in two weeks, until she saw her nextdoor neighbor, and by extension, an opportunity to finally talk to her.

That’s when Catra spots the culprit. A clearly drunk, college-age, shirtless frat guy holding an empty ramen package is trying but apparently failing to explain what happened to the very disgruntled firefighters who were called out here for this not-so-emergency. There’s still a little too much smoke in the building, though, so the firefighters announce that everyone will have to stand outside for a little longer. A sleepy, collective groan arises from the small crowd, and any other night, Catra would’ve joined their chorus. Instead, she makes eye contact with the blonde girl, who gives her a smile. Encouraged, Catra smiles back and closes the last few feet between them.

“Well, now that we’ve survived a life-threatening ordeal together in addition to already being neighbors, it only seems right that we know each other’s names. I’m Catra.”

The blonde girl smiles for real now, all white teeth and crinkled eyes. “I’m Adora. It’s so good to finally meet you!”

“Yeah, up until now I’ve mostly known you as ‘the girl who sings in the shower.’”

“And I’ve mostly known you as ‘the girl who blasts Taylor Swift when her roommate isn’t home.’”

Catra flushes immediately and she’s about to object when Adora laughs, and not unkindly.

“Don’t be embarrassed. I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Swiftie, but I love it. “Love Story” deserves to be played on repeat.”

Catra rolls her eyes, but she laughs. She’s enjoying this; even she can admit that.

“It _is_ really good to meet you,” Adora continues. “I haven’t met anyone else in the building yet. I’m usually kind of . . .”

“In a hurry?” Catra asks, finishing for her.

Adora gives a sheepish smile. “Yeah, I’ve been more . . . harried than usual, lately. I was awake, actually, when the fire alarm went off.”

“Awake at 4 am? What for?”

Adora groans. “Studying. I have a big test coming up and this class is absolutely kicking my ass.”

Catra cocks her head to one side. “Tomorrow? It’s Saturday.”

“Yeah, it’s not til Wednesday. I like to get a head start on things, though.”

“Ahh, so I’ve got an overachiever on my hands?”

Now it’s Adora’s turn to roll her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “You sound like my roommate.”

“Your roommate sounds super smart and cool.”

“I would tell her you said that, but it might inflate her ego too much.”

Catra chuckles low. “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

Adora is about to say something else, but at that moment, the firefighters exit their building, and the announcement that everyone can re-enter the building garners a round of fairly enthusiastic cheers from the exhausted crowd. Everyone begins to file back into the building, and Catra finds herself wishing the fire had been just a _little_ more serious so she could keep standing in the night air, shivering in her Bright Moon University hoodie with Adora.

 _You fucking lesbian_.

Catra’s thoughts are interrupted by a slightly hesitant Adora.

“I know it’s late—or, well, I guess it’s early. But would you . . . would you want to come to my place for tea, or something? It’s nearly 5 am, and I’m really not tired. If you want! You’re probably tired.”

“No,” Catra says, probably too quickly. She tries again. “No, I, um—that’d be nice. I’d like that.”

Adora beams and Catra feels like she’s already been handed something warm.

A stampede of horses wearing tiaras wraps around the mug Catra accepts from Adora’s outstretched hand as they sit down at the kitchen table.

“Nice mug,” Catra says.

Adora’s grey-blue eyes flash with humor. “Thanks, my ex-girlfriend gave it to me. One of the better things she did, maybe?”

Catra can’t help the tiny thrill that rises up in her as Adora studies her, apparently waiting for a reaction.

_She likes girls, too._

“Ex-girlfriends are good for that at least, aren’t they?” Catra says after a beat. “My ex-girlfriend gave me a heated blanket, and the whole relationship might’ve been worth it just for that.”

Adora laughs, then raises her mug toward Catra.

“To ex-girlfriends. Or, at least, the good stuff we got from them.”

Catra grins. “To ex-girlfriends.”

Their mugs clink, and for the first time, Catra has a little trouble looking at Adora. It’s a bit like looking at the sun reflecting off the ocean. Stunning and even calming, but so bright you see spots at the edges of your vision.

Catra clears her throat. “So, I gotta ask. What’s with the pajamas?”

Adora blushes. “It’s an inside joke with my roommate. I grew up in foster care, but my older cousin, Mara, found out about me when I was a teenager and adopted me. She’s a distant relative, but still a cousin. For some reason, she was never notified as my next of kin when my parents died? Anyway, Glimmer says I was a “lost princess” in a fairy tale. Like Rapunzel, or something.”

Adora pauses, then laughs self-consciously, running one hand through her long hair. “Wow, sorry, that’s probably way more info than you wanted.”

“No,” Catra says quickly, shaking her head. “It’s not. That’s . . . a pretty amazing coincidence, actually. I, uh—I grew up in foster care, too.”

Adora’s eyes widen. “No way.”

“Yeah,” Catra says. “One town over, though, in—”

“Etheria?” Adora asks.

“Yeah, actually. You, too?”

“Me, too,” Adora says, a bit of awe in her expression.

“That’s really something,” Catra says, and that doesn’t cover it, not at all, but she can’t think of anything else to say. Adora nods as though she understands, a wisp of pale hair swaying back and forth at the motion.

Catra looks around, hoping to find something more to say, but it’s not easy, this subject. As a foster kid herself, Adora knows this. So instead, Catra changes course.

“Where’s your roommate?”

Adora brightens, seeming relieved. “At her boyfriend’s apartment. Our friend, Bow. They just started dating, so she’s not been around a whole lot lately. It’s kind of been a little . . . lonely, I guess. I don’t know, I’m used to having them both around. Obviously, I’m super happy for them! I just am used to spending a lot of time with them, and now all of a sudden they’re always off together, and of course that’s really good thing for them, they _just_ started dating, but—”

Adora stops here and glances at Catra, apologetic.

“God, sorry, I didn’t mean to start monologuing! I guess I’ve just been here by myself a lot the last couple of weeks.”

“No, you’re good,” Catra says, hoping Adora knows she means it. She doesn’t want Adora to stop talking. “My—my roommate, Scorpia, has been gone a lot, too. She’s got this fancy adult job, and a girlfriend, so she’s been gone a lot, too. All I do lately is work and write research papers, so the fire alarm going off is the most exciting thing to happen to me in a while, honestly.”

She looks at Adora and winks, pleased to see Adora flush. “Can’t say I mind it, considering the company it’s given me.”

Adora looks down at her mug, steam still rising from the top, then raises her eyes up to Catra, a smile tugging at her mouth.

“I really don’t mind either.”

\------

It becomes their thing.

Every Saturday night, Adora or Catra makes the short trek next door to the other’s apartment for tea, or chai, or hot chocolate. And, of course, the company. 

Adora tells Catra all about Mara, about the day she showed up at Adora’s foster home with the social worker when Adora was 14.

“She was like some kind of knight in shining armor,” Adora says. “I didn’t know how to react. I think I was in shock. I thought it couldn’t be real. But it was, and she wanted—she wanted me.”

“That’s the dream, isn’t it?” Catra says. “To be wanted.”

_What the hell?_

Catra is shy suddenly, more than a little shocked at how bluntly she’s talking to Adora, as if this isn’t someone she met just a few weeks ago. The old Catra, the angry, spitting, resentful Catra of her late teenage and early college years never would’ve been like this, not with anyone. Some combination of Scorpia, Entrapta, and the counseling she finally got in college changed a lot of that, but this is different. Adora makes Catra _want_ to talk. Makes her want to open and confess and confide. 

“Yeah,” Adora says, interrupting Catra’s thoughts with a soft expression. “That’s the dream.”

Adora looks at Catra searchingly for a moment, starts to say something, and then changes her mind. Then, she continues her story.

“But, yeah, then Mara helped me stay involved in a bunch of sports and stuff, especially soccer, which I already loved, and now I play for BMU.”

Catra tells Adora about her 11th and final foster parent, Weaver, the woman she lived with all through high school until she aged out of the system, escaping to Bright Moon and the local university on a full ride academic scholarship she clawed her way to for most of high school.

Adora raises her eyebrows. “Four years in the same foster home? For real?”

“Yeah. Weaver was a huge asshole, but she liked regular paychecks. She had half a dozen other foster kids. Some of them were okay, but we all butted heads with Weaver. And with each other. I just kept thinking about how eventually I’d get to college. I don’t know why I thought that. Weaver told me I was too stupid for it.”

A sadness touches the corners of Adora’s eyes and Catra pushes forward, not wanting to dwell on it, not right now.

Catra laughs lightly, breaking some of the tension. “Ironically, though, she wouldn’t let us go anywhere or do anything, so I mostly just did homework all the time. I thought about going to BMU ever since I was a little kid, so that was what I focused on in high school. BMU had this program for foster youth when I was little and they’d bring us up there for a free soccer camp. I didn’t care about the soccer that much, but I loved going there. Everything felt like . . . like a future? I don’t know if that makes sense.”

Adora, eyes wide, nods her head through her astonishment. “No, no, that makes—that makes perfect sense. I just—Catra, I went to that soccer camp, too. The one for foster kids. That’s how I got into soccer in the first place. BMU’s women’s soccer coach _ran_ that camp, she’s my coach now!”

Catra stares at Adora, then realizes her mouth is slightly open in surprise. She closes it and shakes her head.

“No, no way. For real?”

“Yes!” Adora exclaims, her voice reaching an excited pitch as she begins to bounce in her chair. “Hang on, I have a picture from back then that my coach gave me. Come on!”

Adora sprints back to her room, and Catra follows. Adora vaguely registers that Catra is seeing her room for the first time, taking in the fairy lights wound around the white iron frame bed, a twin pair of shelves holding small plants and a handful of trophies, a desk covered in books and a couple of pictures featuring Adora and Mara. Adora watches Catra look around the room out of the corner of her eye as Adora rifles through a stack of papers on her desk.

Adora finds what she’s looking for and triumphantly turns to Catra with the 13-year-old photograph her coach gave her just last week, unearthed in an old filing cabinet storing records from the earliest days of the soccer camp for foster kids in the county.

“I’m the one in the top row on the far left,” Adora says, holding out the photo to Catra. “My coach found it not long ago and recognized me, and there were a few copies, so she said I could have this one.”

Catra accepts the outstretched photo, looking intently at the photograph, eyebrows furrowed. Adora watches her, content to stare for a moment without being detected. Adora tries not to stare most of the time, she really does, but Catra’s bright eyes, one blue and one burnt gold, and her long, dark wavy hair that looks like it would be whisper soft if Adora could get her hands in it . . . 

_She’s so pretty._

“Adora.”

Catra’s tone snaps Adora back to the present moment.

“What is it?” Adora asks.

Catra looks ashen, stunned by something Adora doesn’t understand. 

“Is something wrong?” Adora asks, placing a cautious hand on Catra’s shoulder.

“No, it’s just, I—I’m _in_ this picture.”

Adora freezes for a moment. Then, she gently places one hand on Catra’s shoulder.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. That’s me, right there.”

Catra points to a small girl, almost more curly hair than kid, sitting at the end of the bottom row on the far right. An eight-year-old Catra is just barely smiling, her bright eyes striking even in the old photograph.

“Catra, we—

“We were both there. At the same time. Together, and we didn’t even know it.”

Catra looks up at Adora, and Adora is overcome by it, overcome by the fact that the tiny crush she had on her pretty neighbor three months ago has turned into a bigger crush _and_ a friendship, and now that friendship seems to have a tie to the past that neither of them were aware of until right now. It feels like, like—

“I feel like you wanna say something,” Catra prods.

“I just—it might sound strange, or silly, maybe. I don’t know,” Adora says, hesitating.

“It won’t,” Catra says. She looks at Adora with earnest eyes, ready to listen in the way Adora is growing accustomed to from Catra. Steady.

“It just feels like . . . like fate. Us both being here, living next to each other, not knowing we were sort of connected all this time. Or something a lot like it,” Adora says quietly.

Catra grazes her thumb across one corner of the photograph. 

“That’s not silly. That—that _is_ what it feels like.”

Catra turns to Adora now, stepping closer to her until there’s hardly any space left between them. Adora catalogues the stream of freckles across Catra’s nose, her cupid’s bow mouth, her high cheekbones. Adora has been reluctant to stare at her as much as she’s wanted to, limiting herself to half glances and a longer gaze only here and there. Now, she doesn’t bother to look away, savoring this, Catra gazing back at her with the same unabashed attentiveness.

Adora leans forward before she can overthink it, before she can stop herself, cupping Catra’s face in her hands and kissing her. Catra drapes her arms around Adora’s neck, kissing her back, and Adora’s arms fall to Catra’s waist and pull her close.

Several breathless moments later they break apart, but they don’t let go, don’t look away.

“I guess—I guess that if that’s not fate,” Catra says, her voice lower and quieter in spite of their being alone, “then nothing is.”

Wonder and warmth bubble up in Adora’s chest. It feels a little bit like the day Mara showed up at Adora’s last foster home with a cautious smile on her face and a question that changed Adora’s life forever.

“I feel really lucky right now,” Adora whispers.

Catra smiles up at her, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“You are. I mean, come on, look at me.”

Adora snorts and Catra laughs, resting her head on Adora’s shoulder.

“I feel really lucky, too,” Catra says.

They stand there together, holding each other and their good fortune in their arms.

**Author's Note:**

> it was super fun to write a one shot again! AND no angst who am I
> 
> for anyone who might be interested I have another multichapter catradora au I’m working on that is VERY CLOSE to having a complete first chapter so fingies crossed that’ll be coming in the next week or two. happy new year!!!
> 
> come talk to me on my SPOP twitter @adoralovesgirls !


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